Samstag, Juli 31, 2010

Don't get me wrong. We didn't freeze the development yet but we are freezing our developers! The air condition at the Columbia University in New York City is quite cold. Bring some warm clothes if you going to attend the DebConf that will start soon.

Montag, Juli 26, 2010

Hey, (Big) Apple! I'll arrive in New York tomorrow to attend the Debcamp and the Debconf. I will a talk about the Java packaging nightmare during the Java track next monday. Some other things i will work on:

Sonntag, Juli 18, 2010

This is just a reminder that we will have a small bug squashing party in Berlin. It will take place on monday 19th july starting at 16:00 with open end in the rooms of Büro 2.0 in Neukölln. You have to organize your accomodation by yourself if you do not live in Berlin. More information is available in the Debian Wiki. Please register there if you are planning to attend.

Sonntag, Juli 04, 2010

A bug squashing party with take place on monday, 19th july, in the rooms of Büro 2.0 in Berlin Neukölln. Please check the Wiki page for more information and please register yourself there if you plan to attend. Please don't forget that you have to organize your accomodation by yourself if you do not live in Berlin.

Sonntag, Juni 20, 2010

I have announced the Debian Community Poll and published first results in former blog posts. I'll publish my analysis of the remaining questions about changes to Debian now.

Should Debian remove its non-free component?

80.8% answered no

10.7% answered yes

6.3% answered: I don't know or don't care

2.1% did not answer

Should Debian spend more money?

28.9% choose answer #5: I don't know or don't care.

22.8% choose answer #3: Debian should pay people having important positions in Debian and doing important work.

21.2% choose answer #1: Debian should spend more money on organizing developer conferences and team meetings.

11.4% choose answer #4: Debian should not spend more money.

8.0% choose other (see below) or didn't answer

7.7% choose answer #2: Debian should spend more money on free merchandizing, free DVDs, having a sexy web site, and being present on IT events.

There were quite a number of other answers. One participant missed the information about how the money is currently spend. Several participants didn't want to choose one of the provided answers. They either wanted to choose multiple answers or various combinations of them. Most other answers fall into one of the following categories:

various marketing suggestions with different focus than answer #2

Debian hosted hardware, infrastructure, services

funding upstream development

QA and work on release-blocking issues

partners and commercial support

developing important features

security support for oldstable

education of prospective developers and contributors

documentation for users

improving usability and accessibility

certifications like LPIC

getting supported by hardware and non-free software vendors

beer

promoting debian in developing countries

help contributors running a business on Debian

Bounty system

updating stable to avoid becoming stale

developing multimedia codecs

getting compliant with FSF guidelines for a free system distribution

developing free replacements to non-free software

maintaining a database of debian-friendly hardware

lobbying and politics

visibility to wider society, even non-IT

hardware for driver developers

a more sexy DVD/CD set with graphics (like Fedora, Ubuntu)

membership to boards of W3C, TEI Consortium, OASIS, etc.

Do you prefer time based releases instead of the "it's ready when it's ready" releases?

Samstag, Juni 19, 2010

I have announced the Debian Community Poll in my former blog post. I have closed the poll today and I will start publishing its results now.

What is the codename of the current stable release?

This is the only compulsory question with the intention to block spammers. The correct codename is Lenny but I have accepted almost any answer that is somehow related to Debian. Version numbers, names from Sarge to Experimental, even well known codenames and version numbers from Ubuntu have been counted as correct. 22 partipants answered wrongly and their submissions got removed from the result set. A whopping number of 3258 submissions have been accepted and get analyzed now. Thanks to all participants!

How long have you been using Debian?

33.6% answered 6 - 10 years

32.7% answered 2 - 5 years

16.6% answered more than 10 years

15.5% answered 0 - 2 years

1.7% did not answer

On what kind of hardware are you using Debian?

Multiple answers are allowed for this question and that is why the values do not sum up to 100%.

How do you think about the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG)?

46.0% choose answer #2: I like the DFSG but it is not the most important reason for using Debian.

36.6% choose answer #1: The DFSG is very important to me. I could live with many changes in Debian but I would be very upset if Debian would allow non-free software into its main component in the future.

10.1% choose answer #3: I don't know.

4.9% choose answer #4: I don't care.

2.4% did not answer.

Are you using Debian derived distributions, too?

Multiple answers are allowed for this question and that is why the values do not sum up to 100%. There were a lot of different answers but the most frequent are:

47.1%: Ubuntu (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu)

40.8%: no answer; this was the only way to say that someone does not use a derived distribution

Donnerstag, Juni 10, 2010

I have prepared a poll for users of the Debian operating system at http://tinyurl.com/3y33ska. We had the idea for the poll during the preparation of the MiniDebConf that is currently taking place in Berlin. Please spread the link and fill out the form yourself. Visitors of the MiniDebConf have the option to fill out the form on paper.